Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland is calling on Ottawa to target Tesla vehicles and U.S. alcohol as part of its tariff retaliation package to send a message that an attack on Canadian trade would not be cost-free for Trump's allies.
In an interview with The Canadian Press, Freeland said there should be a 100 per cent tariff on all U.S. wine, beer and spirits, and on all Teslas.
"We need to be very targeted, very surgical, very precise," Freeland said. "We need to look through and say who is supporting Trump and how can we make them pay a price for a tariff attack on Canada."
The move would target Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other power brokers in Trump's orbit, along with powerful lobby groups such as Wisconsin dairy farmers.
Tesla's chief financial officer warned on an earnings call earlier this week that tariffs could hurt the company's profitability.
Freeland said Canada needs to deliver the message to Trump's closest supporters that if you hit Canada, it will hit back — and it will hurt.
"One of the characteristics of the Trump administration is they like to traffic in uncertainty," she said. "There are lots of reports about there being internal debates in the U.S. (administration), so let's use that to our advantage. And let's put some cards on the table and be very clear that if they hit us, we will hit them back."
Trump suggested on Thursday that he still plans to go ahead with his plan to hit Canada and Mexico with 25 per cent across-the-board tariffs on Saturday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 31, 2025.
Comments
Pre-Trump 2, Canada had a 2.5 trillion dollar economy. It may go down to 2.4 or 2.35 once Mr. T. gets bored and moves on.
Mark Carney sees Trump 2 as a temporary setback, but also as an opportunity to leap ahead and diversify and strengthen our ties with our many other democratic allies in Europe and Asia and elsewhere. In addition, he would fill the vacuum left by Trump's walk backward on clean energy and walk forward to build it up in Canada.
Tesla is so small in the scheme of things it's not worth the effort. Freeland will simply be tariffing a symbol.
Biden has tried that pea brain tactic of weaponizing the government against Elon Musk for the last four years. Have you not noticed the results of the election? Tesla is the best-selling car in the world in spite of the Dems dunking on Elon 24/7.
Remember that Elon was a democrat and even voted for Biden. Don’t act surprised if he is in the other camp now. That does not make Trump a more likeable person, but at least he knows how to surround himself with the best.
Instead show us your ability to fix the problem of drugs and fix the problem at the borders, we expect statesmen to negotiate tariffs instead of stupidly blaming Elon as if he were responsible.
Don’t bet against Elon; he does not start fights, but he finishes them.
Canada's economy topped 2.5 trillion dollars last year. Tesla isn't even a speck of ink on that balance sheet. Moreover, Elon Musk is not the genius he and his cult base portray him as. He only had money, starting with his father's, to hire smart engineers, half of whom he later fired. Ditto Space X and StarLink.
The real Musk "genius" is found in his management model of the disastrous cesspool of Twitter / X, and the manipulation of the signals from StarLink satellites to favour Russia while weakening signals to Ukraine in the Russian war in Ukraine. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens have been murdered by Russia, and there is Musk praising Putin and being the chief distributor of Kremlin propaganda through T / X.
Tesla has the highest car sales in the world. So what? Tesla was a puny 2.6% of total car sales in the 2022 European market. If we're looking for tech that does an efficient job of reducing overall societal emissions, so far, EVs haven't added up to a lot. But moving EV batteries into the grid and coupling them with renewables will start to make a difference. In that area, Musk scored a couple of points .... until you compare Tesla's Chinese-made grid batteries to Form Energy or any manner of flow battery that has a longer and deeper storage period.
The data that really matters is, what is Tesla's share of total ridership compared to mass transit, regional rail and good old walkable urbanism? In Europe and Asia it's not even a flea. In North American economies it may be as big as a cockroach. Tesla's first plant was and still is in Shanghai, but it now operates an American gigafactory that may or may not be subject to Trump's illiterate economic hubris, depending on if Daddy loves Elon as much as Don Jr. and is willing to cut Tesla some slack while all other EV-related IRA policy backed industries are hammered to death by the orange hand of the MAGA Messiah.
Musk sold his soul to the Chinese to get off the ground, just like every other car major. He also did not invent the EV battery, which is the core tech. Musk simply put Panasonic, then Chinese CATL and BYD batteries in a sheet metal object boringly designed after a computer mouse. CATL and BYD engineers and others are the true geniuses who are releasing the best battery tech on Earth, most recently using cheap and abundant sodium and silicon. Now China is busy killing combustion car tech and nationalizing EVs. Too bad, Elon.
But, admittedly, he still has his fanboys. Crazy.
À part ça, ça va bien, vous? Monsieur Botta.
A speck ?
Tesla is 1.234 trillion, which has a bigger market cap than all the other carmakers put together, no debts and plenty of cash. Now it is very unlikely that Tesla can be blackmailed by the Bank of America as it did in 2018 when the bank colluded with the corrupted SEC at a time when the company was very vulnerable financially and close to bankruptcy, they wanted to kill Tesla so much you could smell it.
If I believe your numbers, Tesla is fairly more than half of Canada’s economy. And that is not counting the private ones: Space X, Starlink, Neuralink, Boring, XTwitter, XAi etc.
Oh yes, he has a lot of fanboys like me; his audience is more than the Canadian population.
This audience, who believes in his mission to accelerate the transition to a sustainable future for humanity, is people who judge Elon Musk by his accomplishments, which are more transparent than anyone else on the planet.
Just like a pilot should be judged by his actions to accomplish his flight plan, Elon should be judged by his actions to accomplish his Master Plan Part 3. Have you missed Parts 1&2? It is easy to read; he does not have anything to hide: https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf
Elon has a fiduciary responsibility to protect his companies, so you can imagine his joy of being part of a political party that will not try to destroy him like the Dems did for the last four years. Would you not feel the same?
Compare his plan with what all the haters (or hateboys like you) may have in life.
Biden has tried that pea brain tactic of weaponizing the government against Elon Musk for the last four years. Have you not noticed the results of the election? Tesla is the best-selling car in the world in spite of the Dems dunking on Elon 24/7.
Remember that Elon was a democrat and even voted for Biden. Don’t act surprised if he is in the other camp now. That does not make Trump a more likeable person, but at least he knows how to surround himself with the best.
Instead show us your ability to fix the problem of drugs and fix the problem at the borders, we expect statesmen to negotiate tariffs instead of stupidly blaming Elon as if he were responsible.
Don’t bet against Elon; he does not start fights, but he finishes them.